B00BFVOGUI EBOK (5 page)

The others saw it, too. He turned from the monitor to the people who, moments before, had been trying to kill him. “You know what this means,” he said.

“Yes.” Rumber dipped her head, and the others followed. “Your message — your prophecy — it was right.”

“
Humans
,” Tellmer said, the very word acidic to him. Every Xylander knew about humans. The mere presence of humanity threatened everything the Xylanx stood for.

Even if the humans themselves didn’t know the Xylanx existed.

“We should never have doubted you, my priest.” Rumber said. “You warned us. You were right.”

Kolvax smiled. That wasn’t all it meant. He wouldn’t be the nuisance anymore, easily dismissed. After this the Dominium would have to contend with him. He was back in the big game.

He snatched the weapon out of Rumber’s hand; she didn’t protest. “Hurry,” he said, heading for the staircase. “We’re going hunting!”

Bridget heard the high-pitched
voice in her headset. “Uh — this is Jamie. You know, the
trader you’re supposed to be protecting?”

As
if I could forget.
The security chief holstered her sidearm and rolled her eyes. “What do you
want?” Bridget asked.

“I keep hearing things,” Jamie
said. “You said this station was unoccupied—”

“It
is
occupied. You’re in it.”
To
the station’s everlasting regret
, she thought. The Dragon’s Depot hadn’t
seen visitors from Earth since Quaestor took ownership
of it, years earlier. But today was moving day, with her newly retitled Surge Sigma team helping to move the trader in. Their
security sweeps, like hers that had just ended, had turned up nothing. Not even
much dust.

But the trader still had to be humored.
“Why didn’t you tell this to Welligan, Jamie? I sent
his team with you.”

A pause. “Yeah, they kind of got pissed at
me…and left,” Jamie said.

Bridget chuckled. Her opinion of Hiro Welligan was improving. “Just
find them,” she said.

Lissa Trovatelli
slid out from beneath the alien-built console she was working on. “Was that five times?” she asked.

“Six,” Bridget said, watching her
frosty breath in the air. Trovatelli slid back
underneath the console and returned to work. More lights were functioning here
on the command deck now, but the biggest job lay ahead. Bridget’s new base was
two kilometers long, and she still hadn’t seen a tenth of it.

Only one of the two giant habitation drums had
been completed by the station’s builders, and even this one — deemed “north” by
her team — was full of exposed walls and half-finished work. The Regulans had seen the futility of trading in the region and
given up.

Dubbed the Dragon’s Depot by its
purchasers, the station was a dumbbell of sorts: two giant rolling drums rotating
in opposite directions around a fat central tube. The habitation cylinders
turned slowly, generating one gee in the outermost decks without any of the Coriolis-induced dizziness of some of the smaller,
Earth-built stations. One end of the station’s spine was tipped with a circular
collector dish with the same diameter as the station; it shielded occupants
from Sigma Draconis’s rays while harvesting necessary
energy. And ringing the center between the “north” and “south” habitation bulbs
were eight whirlibangs, connected to the axial
cylinder by a spiraling network of tracks and girders.

The place was built for business,
to be sure. Bangboxes by the thousands could pass
through the depot, switching to other whirlibang
tracks and going right out again. More still could be warehoused in the station
itself. And eight transit rings was plenty. Bridget knew where five of the whirlibangs went, but the other three were still a mystery.
One of them had a ’box loaded, ready to go.

She’d investigate that later — after
Trovatelli got the climate controls fixed. The air
was breathable but frigid.
Maybe they
turned the heat down because nobody was home?
Bridget knew that was
ridiculous, of course: the same elemental forces that powered the whirlibangs had made it possible to keep the place running,
even unoccupied. “I thought the Regulans left us an
owner’s manual,” she said.

“They did,” Trovatelli
answered, hand tool sparking as she fused a connection. “Somebody’s fooled with
the controls. Odd — Regulans usually like it warmer.”

The statement surprised Bridget. “You
sound like you’ve been on the range before.”

“Born out here,” Trovatelli said with just the trace of an Italian accent. “Giotto Colony, Luyten’s Star.”

Bridget was glad to hear it. Jake
Temmons, her last Q/A, had left abruptly and was
probably settling in at his new university fellowship now. Bridget hadn’t been
too sorry to see him go. Baby-sitting precocious wunderkinds wasn’t her idea of
a good time. But Trovatelli’s work had impressed so
far, even as the young technician’s appearance had caught many of her
teammates’ eyes.

Bridget had wondered about
something else. It was rare to find a woman in her twenties born on the other
side of the whirlibang. Trovatelli
belonged to what was still a small subset of humanity: the children of
pioneers. The ease with which such people handled life on the range meant they
were coveted by all the major corporations. What was she doing with such a
hard-luck outfit? Bridget made a mental note to check into her record later.

Trovatelli closed the console’s maintenance
panel. “That’s it,” she said, wiping her hands on her flight suit. “Should be tunic weather in an hour or two.”

As the chief started to offer
congratulations her earpiece beeped. “Here we go again,” she said, touching the
device. “What is it now, Jamie?”

 “I’m telling you, this time I saw something!”
Jamie’s voice had gone up an octave, if that were possible.

“I’m sure it’s Welligan’s people messing with you,” she said. They
were
hiding from him if they were smart.

“I thought you hotshots were
supposed to be pros,” the trader replied. “Can’t you — I don’t know — scan for life-forms
or something?”

“Yes, I’ll check my vids archive for space opera and see how they did it.”
Bridget shook her head at Trovatelli. “Jamie, I’m
working my way to your level. Hang in there.” The broker started to say
something else, but she muted the transmission.

Trovatelli gathered up her tools. “What’s
the story with him? I didn’t catch all that back with Falcone — I
was worried about the building falling apart.”

“Idiot gambled with the
expedition’s money and lost it all, basically. Now we’ve got a few weeks to get
it all back.”

“How much?”

“A hundred
billion dollars.”

“Good luck with that,” Trovatelli said.  She
looked at Bridget slyly. “Still, he’s kind of cute…for an imbecile.”

“I’m sure he thinks so,” Bridget
said. “He’s gonna have to hope the judge back on
Earth thinks so too, if this doesn’t work.”

This
isn’t going to work
,
Jamie thought. Here he was, 158 trillion kilometers from home and a hundred
billion dollars in the hole. Well, more than that, actually — he hadn’t told Falcone everything, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to.

And he was freezing his ass off.

Alone on one of the rotating
cargo decks, he sat in his space suit, helmet and gloves off. He only had the
one suit he’d worn to Altair, and that still smelled like guacamole. He’d asked
for more clothes, but they’d left Altair in such a hurry he could only get the
space suit. He was in his jockey shorts underneath, and the suit’s warmer
wasn’t doing its job.

The troopers had promised more
clothing was packed in the gear they’d shipped. He hoped it was true: at this
point, he was willing to make a turtleneck from one of Arbutus Dinner’s socks. The
entourage had brought a total of six ’boxes from Altair. That included two for
personnel and two for shuttle conversion, plus one more for supplies they weren’t
likely to find stationside. He hoped something his
size was in there.

And then there was the final
container, jokingly known as the “general store,” which had all any itinerant
trader needed to open negotiations with new species. The store would be married
to one or more of the personnel containers and an engine to make the trading
vessel. The smaller items had been unloaded, and he had been spending his time
studying up on his new job.

There was “the briefcase,” a
throwback to the traveling salesmen of the twentieth century. One side of the
case contained the handheld menu that operated the large fabricator in the
store. Up to a certain level of complexity, many products could be manufactured
on the scene: it made a lot more sense than shipping one of everything by the ’boxful.
So rather than bringing a sample of everything Quaestor
had for sale, the trader could use the briefcase to produce a small number of
items as examples, as long as all the component elements were in supply. After
a sale, Quaestor would bring in an entire factory to
produce the desired items in whatever quantity was demanded. Quaestor sold the fabricators, too, but in custom sizes
suited for the consuming species — and loaded with whatever patented recipes the
customers had bought licenses for. Jamie hoped someone had programmed it with
some tailored shirts from Ascot Chang. The Dragon’s Depot was a long way from
Manhattan.

On the other side was the
assayer, an isopanel that calculated market values
back home for goods found on the frontier. It was the same system Jamie was
working with on Ops and so the information was always a little out of date: its
data could only be updated when another traveler arrived through the whirlibang with more recent commodity quotes. But at least
it was a system he was familiar with.

And there was the badge, which identified
him as a representative of Quaestor, a trading firm
licensed by Earth, a member in good standing of the Signatory Systems. It was a
golden, gaudy thing, festooned with pins and beads and clockwork that moved; Quaestor’s designers had used a chelengk,
a decoration from the Ottoman Empire, as a model. Jamie thought the tacky thing
would have been rejected by even the flashiest of sultans.

The designers had crafted it to
be noticeable by aliens of all species, whatever their sensory capabilities:
they’d left nothing out. In addition to its garish looks, a jeweled section
spun for the motion sensitive and a small heater gave it a unique infrared
signature. It made a little squawking sound every minute, as well as emitting
signals beyond human hearing. It felt prickly, smelled like cinnamon, and
tasted vaguely like lemon. Jamie could only imagine the alien who’d need to
lick his badge to identify him. Oh, and the thing was slightly radioactive.
Jamie thought if he tripped and fell with the badge on his chest, it would be
the end of him.

He looked coldly at the badge
before sighing and affixing it to his space suit for the hell of it. The thing’s
little widgets immediately began spinning and dancing. “My God,” he said,
thrilled the traders at Ops could not see him. Dear Selena would be laughing in
the aisle.

Thump.

Jamie spun around. It was what he’d
heard before. Someone else was out there!

“Welligan?”

Nothing.

He touched his earpiece.
“Bridget, listen. Something’s here—”

“I’m not talking to you anymore,
Jamie,” she replied in his ear. “I’ve got a job to do.”

“Protecting me is your job,” he
said. “I tell you, I’m hearing something!”

“It’s probably that toy on your
chest,” she said. It was peeping like a baby chick now. “I told you, I have things
to tend to first. I’ll see you when I see you.” She ended the transmission.

Jamie fumed. He looked down at
the badge and then around at the goods he was supposed to work with.

Screw
this
, he
thought, pulling at the badge. But he couldn’t get a good grip on it, and its
moving and poky parts seemed to almost fight back against him. “Ouch!”

Aggravated, he gave up and let it
remain on his suit. He opened his naked palm and triggered the interface to his
EndoSys.

His personal supercomputer, the EndoSys resided on his left thumbnail, where it maintained
a wireless interface with whatever knowglobes and
other databases were around. The machine’s readout appeared on his palm, the harmless
work of resident pigment-stimulating nanoids injected
into his system. EndoSys implants had already replaced
tattoos in the twenty-second century, as humans eschewed static images in favor
of becoming walking animation studios; now, EndoSys-enabled
hands were replacing handheld isopanels. With a few
words and a finger tap, Jamie saw on his palm the map leading back to the whirlibang. Then he requested instructions for activating
the device. A reading of the details went to his earpiece.

The directions didn’t sound too
difficult.
I can do this
, he thought.

When a ’box was at a whirlibang station, it wasn’t really a spaceship anymore.
It was more like an elevator car, unable to go anywhere but where it was
supposed to. Jamie knew which whirlibang loop was
tuned to send ’boxes to Altair; the one he’d come in on.

Jamie wondered what would happen
if he returned. Falcone might not have left any
orders with the Altair whirlibang station crew
regarding him. All Jamie would have to do is take one ride to Altair, and then
the connecting link to Venus. He’d catch his shuttle home a few days late. And as for Quaestor’s hundred billion
dollars…

…well, he’d worry about that later.
It wouldn’t be his only problem back on Earth. Not by a long shot, not after
his relatives found out. But back home, he’d at least have a chance of
disappearing. He’d sell cheeseburgers to Czechs, lingerie in Lesotho. Anything
would be better than this.

Badge peeping away, Jamie ran
toward the exit. He heard the thump again, but this time he didn’t stop to
look.
Next stop, home!